Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

The Great Turning
From Empire to Earth Community

Reverend Kurt Kuhwald
September 16, 2007
Palo Alto, CA

The title for this morning’s sermon is The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. The Great Turning is an expression that arose in the work of deep ecology in the 1980’s and was picked up by Joanna Macy for its power in locating us both in the ragged journey of human history and in the awesome, outrageous, mysterious, love saturated, stirring and unfathomable story of the unfurling Universe. Joanna Macy is a world renowned Berkeley eco-feminist, Buddhist and systems theorist who has developed an international reputation over the course of 40 years as a speaker, writer and workshop leader of great skill and deep compassion. A year ago, I spent six days in a workshop of hers called the Great Turning on the coast of Oregon at the Westwind conference center located on a pristine stretch of beach that is about 2 miles long and framed by impassable cliffs at each end. Westwind must be reached by a boat crossing of the Salmon River.

It was fitting to have our intensive workshop at that remote, beautiful and majestic site because the natural power and beauty of our Beloved Earth is at the core of the meaning of the term The Great Turning. In Joanna’s words, the Great Turning is “a name for the transition from the industrial-growth society [some call it Empire], to a life-sustaining society. It identifies the shift from a self-destroying political economy to one in harmony with Earth and enduring for the future. It unites and includes all the actions being taken to honor and preserve life on Earth. It is the essential adventure of our time.” Repeat: It is the essential adventure of our time.

“Of course, [she goes on] most people involved in this adventure do not call it the Great Turning. They do not need that name in order to fight for survival [or] to fashion the forms of a sane and decent future. Yet more and more of us are finding that concept to be wonderfully useful.”

She continues: “For me as a teacher, activist, and mother, the Great Turning helps me see what the physical eye cannot: the larger forces at play and the direction they are taking. At the same time, it sharpens my perception of the actual concrete ways people are engaging in this global shift. In other words, it serves me as both compass and lens.”

How important it is to have a reliable compass in these difficult and violent times, times when the military power and the economic advantage of the elite [a very small minority of people, who own a hugely disproportionate amount of the world’s wealth — and who more and more frequently act outside the fundamental democratic principles that are the deepest vision of this country] are greater than ever before in human history. How important to know that our innate skills as human beings, can both forge and discover tools for us that we can trust, tools that we can rely on to find our way in the growing chaos and oppression that is ever more wildly swirling around us. (A growing chaos that Kofi Anan, the recent past Secretary General of the UN, said had blatantly increased during the decade of his tenure. Increased in three major areas: Economic disparity between the rich and the poor; violent and brutal conflicts all over the planet; and, violations of and contempt for human rights.) As a compass to find our way in these times, this idea of the Great Turning is a deep, needed and powerful perception, a radical shift into a very different consciousness, for it reflects both the emergence and creation of a new story of human kind, this planet, and of the universe itself; it is a new more Earth grounded story that comes from our recognition that we are inseparable from the Earth; it comes from a deep comprehension that we have evolved out of and from the Earth’s deep processes and that our human wisdom is its wisdom. As Joanna recently wrote, “… life is a dynamic process, self-organizing to adapt and evolve. Just as it turned scales to feathers, gills to lungs, seawater to blood, so now, too, immense evolutionary pressures are at work [ … immense evolutionary pressures are at work]. They are driving this revolution of ours through innumerable … intersecting alterations in the human capacity for conscious change.”

And that is the hinge point, that is the very forming edge, of the transformation now surging across the planet. The changes necessary to save the planet from the destructive human forces that are ravaging the Earth, assaulting human beings, slaughtering animal life, the changes necessary are ultimately dependent upon our capacity to be conscious, to be aware — as well as to trust that that consciousness comes out of the deep structures of the very Earth itself. We are engaged now in a powerful evolutionary move toward healing, reconnection, a more spacious and wide-ranging vision, as the Earth, like any open system (and the Earth is an open system, you see), as the Earth processes organize and reorganize to reclaim a life-sustaining balance out of the destructiveness we humans are perpetrating upon it. As it makes these creative, enormous, often-subtle moves, it calls from us something very special — and that is choice.

New understandings are intertwining with ancient wisdom in the emergence of this new vision, this new vision of the deeply organic and intelligent processes of the Earth, of which we are an absolutely integral part. But the tipping point in this dynamic process, the most critical and challenging factor is whether enough of us will choose to act … whether enough of us will choose to act upon what is becoming visible and known: that we are entering a steep dive toward massive planetary disaster and that we only have a small space in time to stop that dive, replacing destructiveness with healing, violence with compassionate peace, greed with love, and ignorance with wisdom.

Joanna, and so many deep ecologists, eco-feminists and others are clear about this: the chances are only 50–50 that we will turn back from the free fall we are about to enter. Perhaps our chances are, in fact, not even that good.

And this terrible reality — that we might lose it all, that we might be witnesses to the radical decimation of the human race, that our legacy to our children and our children’s children might be an earth horribly denuded of life forms, whose seas are rank with toxins, whose air is unbreathable, that this scenario is now actually possible — this terrible reality may well be the pivotal psychological reality of our time.

Throughout human history, though there have been apocalyptic prophesies, and fear for the future of the earth … it has never been spread across all of humanity. There was always the tacit assumption that life would go on … and it did. Others, the next generations or other cultures, would carry on … and they did. And eventhough lately, the glib assertion (or the vague floating hope) that technology will surely solve these problems has been used to form a buffer from the hard scientific facts — that tacit assumption, that “Certainty” of life continuing … has been taken from us.

The fact is … the apocalyptic vision of planetary destruction no longer comes from a vision of a Deity wreaking revenge on human kind — it comes more chillingly — from the fact of the actual consequences of human behavior, behavior that has been ignorant, self-absorbed, greedy and consumed by a massive lust for power and privilege.

Our intellectual arguments cannot dispel the growing scientific evidence. Our false hopes cannot gloss over the losses and the violence — nor can they obscure our collective and personal culpability.

Joanna Macy’s response to this reality is clear and noble and astoundingly insightful: “The Great Turning comes with no guarantees. Its risk of failure is its reality. Insisting on belief in a positive outcome puts blinders on us and burdens the heart. [Insisting on belief in a positive outcome puts blinders on us and burdens the heart.] We might manage to convince our selves that everything will surely turn out all right, but would such happy assurance elicit our greatest courage and creativity? [Would such happy assurance elicit our greatest courage and creativity?”

“The Great Turning, [she writes] as a compass pointing to the possible, helps me live with radical uncertainty. It also causes me to believe that, whether we succeed or not, the risks we take on behalf of life will bring forth dimensions of human intelligence and solidarity beyond any we have known.”

So … our present reality contains, undeniably includes, the fact of destructiveness and a headlong trajectory toward devastation … but … it also involves a widespread revolution. This revolution has been named as the third for the human species, the first being the agricultural revolution of the late Neolithic, the second being the industrial revolution of the past two centuries. Because the revolution we now enter must, if it is to succeed, be consciously chosen, it will be, in the words of former EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus, “absolutely unique in humanity’s stay on Earth.”

And it is everywhere. The signs of this third revolution appear all over the earth. Joanna writes, “The Great Turning lens reveals that initiatives as different in character as a wind farm, a lawsuit against election fraud, and a fleet of kayaks protecting marine mammals are all part of [this] … transition.”

I think it is important to have some sense of the total picture of what the Turning constitutes so that both the tragic failures and the radical hope can be seen in the largest possible context. There are many ways to frame this difficult and dynamic time.

Another person who has developed a powerful frame of understanding is David Korten, co-founder of the Positive Futures Network, which publishes YES! Magazine, and author of a number of books about the tyranny of corporatization and the devastating limits of capitalism, as well as his latest that is, in fact, named The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. Korten argues that “The Great Turning requires more than adjustments at the margin of Empire. It requires turning from dominator to partnership relations in each of three major spheres of human activity”: (1) Cultural Turning which involves a cultural and spiritual awakening that rejoices in our diversity. (2) Economic Turning which redefines wealth and measures it by family, community and natural environmental health. And, (3) Political Turning which means a transformation from passive to active citizenship, and, among other things, from retributive justice to restorative justice, from coercion to mutual accountability.

For our purposes today, I want to use Joanna’s framing, which is also tripartite (all these Trinitarians!). The first is all those actions and efforts that are meant to slow down and stop the destruction caused by the Industrial-growth society. From petitioning, to litigation, to direct action and civil disobedience their primary work is to block, disrupt, challenge, and stand firmly against abusive power as it attempts to spread its destructive and hegemonic control.

But a life-sustaining society requires more, it requires, secondly, a specific commitment to the creation of new forms and structures. She writes, “Here we see the emergence of sustainable alternatives, from solar panels to farmers markets, from land trusts to cohousing, permaculture and local currencies. ” The proliferation of these forms now is greater and swifter than at any other epoch in the human journey. But then she writes, “To proliferate and endure, [these forms] must mirror who we are and what we really want. They require, in other words, a profound change in our perception of reality. ”

And that is the third dimension: A Shift in Consciousness, both personal and collective. Joanna believes that “Whether they come through Gaia theory, systems theory, chaos theory [and the new sciences], or through liberation theology, shamanic practices, or the Goddess,[new] insights and experiences are absolutely necessary to free us from the [death] grip of the industrial-growth society. They offer us nobler goals and deeper pleasures. They redefine our wealth and our worth, liberating us from compulsions to consume and control.” For me, they also give a wide, comprehensive and spacious vision — that gives us room, that creates an expanded sense of time in which to do the work necessary for transformation. This large vision of the whole transformation also relieves the stress we feel when our vision and our work are limited to social action.

And then she adds these words: “So rich is the harvest, that when we claim these new understandings, there’s little room for panic or self-pity. Instead, gratitude arises for the mere fact of being alive at this moment, and when, for all the darkness coming upon us, blessings abound. They help us stay alert and steady, so we can join hands to find the ways the world self-heals — and see the present chaos as seedbed for the future. ”

I believe that this congregation is powerfully positioned to join the Great Turning. Aren’t we, by conviction and action, part of the resistance to destructiveness and violence? Aren’t we some kind of spiritual/ethical alternative to the fundamentalist religious rabidness that is the unavoidable consequence of the domination of the Industrial-growth society? Aren’t we committed to find new ways of being together beyond a dominator, oppressive, ego-locked style of relationship?

Yes … Yes, and … . Yes … and because of the consciousness of the planet’s present distress, because of the consciousness of the need for deep transformation, because at our core we know the uncertainty about the fate of the Earth … because we are capable of growing in consciousness … our efforts must take a new shape. We must find ways to admit into our midst, into our hearts and into our conscious understanding new ways of thinking, of being in relationship, of naming our work, and of directing our precious energies.

The future of the Earth is, literally, in our hands.
The future of the Earth is, literally, in our hands.

May we here have the courage and the heart to act in time.
May we here have the courage and the heart to act in time.

All My Relations.
Ashé. Amen. Ameen. Shalom & Blessed Be.
Gracias y Namasté.

 

Reflection by Florence Haas